Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/412

 upon a world in the fashioning of which the hand of man has had no part. Age has succeeded age; race has swept forward, has surged up and has obliterated race; history has been made and unmade a thousand times by myriads of puny men; but all the while in this hidden cranny of the globe the great Mother has been working her gradual miracles. It is old, old, old; older than record; older than speech; older than man; and yet for you it is newer than aught else, a secret kept faithfully through all the ages to be revealed at last to you. You look around you with a keen delight, with eager eyes that find a fresh interest in all they light upon, with a heart chastened by the solemnity, the mystery of this unfrequented wilderness. The awfulness of your surroundings, the aloofness from your fellows, the sense of your exclusive privilege, impart to you a feeling akin to that by which the newly initiated priest may be inspired when, for the first time, he lifts the veil that cloaks the inner temple of his wor- ship; but here there is no grinning idol to dispel illusion, but rather a little glimpse vouchsafed to mworthy man of the vision of the true God.

For nearly an hour we glided downstream through long, calin reaches, where the sunlight flecked the dancing waters between banks thickly set by bam- boo thickets backed by impenetrable forest, and each bend in the winding river revealed yet another perfect picture of the beauty and the splendour of this jungle paradise. We were heading for the un- known, passing thither through untrodden ways, and